Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Jeremy Wright MP DCMS Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

SOPHY RIDGE: When our next guest was appointed Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport you’d be forgiven for not knowing who he was but all that is about to change. With responsibility for tackling cyber-security, fake news and online abuse, Jeremy Wright has one of the most important jobs around the Cabinet table. I started though by asking if he thought a Brexit deal could be struck this month.

JEREMY WRIGHT: I’m certainly optimistic and I think we probably shouldn’t pick over the bones of what everybody says on every occasion but I think there is good reason for optimism. If we look at the interests not just of the UK but of the EU as well I think it’s in both our interests that we get a good deal and that’s what the government is striving to do, it’s what the Prime Minister has been trying to do for months now …

SR: So could it happen within weeks?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I think inevitably we’ve got an EU Council coming up in October, we hope very much that significant progress will be made and I think the EU wants that too so I think we’re all hopeful but in the end what we need is a good deal and what we need is something that will benefit the UK and benefit the EU and what we won’t do is accept any deal at all, we won’t accept an arrangement that prejudices the position of the United Kingdom but I think it is perfectly possible to get a deal that does us some good and does the EU good as well.

SR: The interesting thing about what Jean Claude Junker said was that the chances of agreement have gone up in recent days so who has compromised? Is it Theresa May or is it Brussels?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well it may be of course that the pressure of time is such that people are recognising the need to come together more and what we …

SR: But what he’s saying, he’s talking about a couple of days. I mean it sounds like something’s moved.

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well what we’ve done of course is we’ve said to the EU, look, here’s a proposal, here’s how we can deal with some of the big challenging issues that surround Brexit like for example how to manage the problem of the Irish border that you’ve talking about in the rest of the programme but we need to see what the EU are prepared to say back to us in response.

SR: So how do you compromise? I’m trying to get …

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I don't know yet what the EU counter-proposal will be, what they will say back to us. There are obviously further discussions to have, not just about the Irish border but about the future economic relationship we want and need to have with the EU in the future so let’s see.

SR: Now I am keen to talk to you about your brief as well. In recent weeks we’ve seen more information coming out about what’s been happing with Russia and this accusation that they’ve been hacking a high profile number of targets including the chemical weapons watchdog that were actually investigating Salisbury. Now you’re the Minister in charge of digital so you are now all about protecting the country as well.

JEREMY WRIGHT: I think we’re all about protecting the country and have been for some time.

SR: But it feels like digital is the new frontline.

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I think there’s no doubt that the methods being used by nation states, and of course by terrorists as well, to cause us potential harm are changing and one of those new frontiers is the digital world and that means that we need to get smarter in our own defence. That’s why institutions like the National Cyber Security Centre are so important, why it’s necessary for them to do the work that they’re doing but what we’ve seen I think is that it’s not just Britain that faces these challenges, it’s other countries as well. One of the things that we’ve tried to get across, I think successfully, in response to what happened in Salisbury is that this is a problem the whole world needs to wake up to and what we’ve seen in the Netherlands just this week is that the Russians are prepared to try and do what they’ve been trying to do in the Netherlands, which is to try and influence the investigations of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Now they wouldn’t be doing that if they didn’t have some responsibility for what happened in Salisbury, as we’ve said all along, so the whole work I think is waking up to this challenge, not just the UK, but the UK is in the forefront I think of dealing with the cyber challenge.

SR: So how many of these other attacks have we thwarted?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well we can never be specific because we don’t always want to disclose the methods we’ve used to thwart those particular attacks but there is no doubt in my mind that there have been a number of them, many of which we have been able to thwart and so the work of, as I said, the National Cyber-Security Centre and of course the broader National Security architecture, is shifting gradually not just towards digital but across the whole cyber sphere to make sure that we deal with the threats we actually face.

SR: It feels as well that another frontier if you like in this war is an information war, a propaganda war if you like. We see that with Russia don’t we and the way that they use social media, is that part of your brief as well?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Yes, very much so and I think the whole broader agenda of fake news is one that I have to focus on because it’s partly about misinformation, it’s partly about things that are on the internet that are just frankly wrong and then it’s partly about disinformation, which is deliberately putting up material on the internet either from a national country, either from a nation or from another organisation deliberately trying to mislead us and that we’ve seen some of too. So what we need is not just a structural response, not just to see the national security architecture get better at dealing with it but the fact that we all need to be a bit more sceptical about what we read on the internet, about what we see and be more sceptical about where it might be coming from.

SR: Is Russia the worst offender here?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well it’s one of the worst offenders, no question and we’ve seen, as I say, evidence of this so we all need to be sceptical about where this material is coming from. Some of it may be coming from Russia, some of it from somewhere else but we all just need to be a little bit more sceptical about what we’re reading.

SR: Now I’ve got to ask you, you’re – as we’ve been talking about – the Minister in charge of digital affairs. Before you got this job you had some tweets, you don’t have an Instagram account, were you a bit surprised when Theresa May called you into her office and offered you the job?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I think everyone’s surprised when they’re offered a new job in politics and the circumstances in which I got mine were surprising but look, this is a fascinating job and one of the things that’s fascinating is the need to look at the way in which we look at internet regulation for example, the way in which we control the on-lying harms that we are all becoming increasingly conscious of and …

SR: Did you have to brush up on your social media skills then?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I’ll come to that but the first thing I was going to say was it’s not a bad idea if you are looking at constructing a new system of regulation to have someone with a legal background doing it so some of the experience I have might be quite useful in this but the truth is when people say you’re not on Twitter what they actually mean is not ‘We can’t see what you’re doing on Twitter’ because people can see what I’m doing on Twitter, if they go on now they’ll be able to see exactly what I’m doing but what they really mean is ‘Are you prepared to have a row with people you’ve never met on Twitter?’ and the answer to that is no, I think there are better things I can do with my time but I think all that social media does is hugely important. There are huge positives but there are huge downsides as well and one of the things that we’ve got to do in government is to focus on the downsides as much as on the upsides and that’s what we’re going to do over the next few months and years.

SR: Now there were lots of rumours around the Conservative conference that you were going to do your speech as a hologram, what was this about and why did you decide not to do it? Was it Matt Hancock’s idea?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I’m a huge fan of modern technology and all of these new techniques are very exciting but in the end, actually, I think it’s quite important that you go to conference in person and that you deliver the message in person.

SR: You might have got a few more people watching the speech if you had done it as a hologram.

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well frankly perhaps they thought if I wasn’t showing up, they didn’t need to show up but I think there is every reason to go to conference and give the messages you want to give in person so technology is great but it doesn’t substitute for frontline contact with people face to face as we’re doing now and I think that’s the way in which political debate should be conducted as well as what we can do on social media.

SR: Now your department has also been heavily involved in the takeover of Sky and Comcast are taking control shortly. They have given us a series of assurances about the future of Sky News, I’m interested to know, are you assured that there are enough safeguards in place to make sure that they stick to what they have effectively promised when it comes to the editorial independent of Sky News and also making sure they don’t renege on their promise to keep it open?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Yes, I have had those assurances and I do find them persuasive but just to make sure, I have had conversations with those who run Comcast very recently, since these arrangements have been made and I’ve asked for some further reassurances because it seems to me that this is hugely important but also it is also important to say that Sky News is a massive asset and so I don’t expect that Comcast are going to want to change the way in which Sky News operates but in any event, I’ve left them in no doubt at all about the importance of editorial independence in Sky News and what we expect to see, not just over the immediate period following the changes to corporate ownership but in the longer term.

SR: And also that they can’t just walk away from Sky News as well?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well there are certain undertakings they’ve given which do have force and it’s important that we hold them to those but more than that, we want to make sure they are committed to Sky News in the long term and committed to its editorial independence and going back to our previous conversation, I think a large part of the answer to the fake news problem, if we want to put it like that, is good, authoritative, well-researched journalism that comes from places like Sky and others – there are other news services available we should say – but it is important that all of that good authoritative journalism is part of the antidote to the fake news problem and people should be able to discriminate between that kind of journalism and what they read online.

SR: You spoke there about further assurances, what do you mean by that?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I want us to make sure that the commitments that have been made so far are firmed up, that we have absolute reassurance and if we can do more to get that absolute reassurance then I’m keen to explore that and Comcast are also keen to explore it with us.

SR: This is one of your first major interviews, if you like, since getting the job and a lot of people don’t know very much about you so I thought just to end if we could try and get a bit more of a sense of what you’re all about. Now you of course as the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport are in charge of sport so are a big sports fan, Mr Wright?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Yes, I am and one of the most exciting things for me is that I got to go to the first day of the Edgbaston Test at the beginning of the India series, it was hugely exciting for me, so I do, I watch cricket, I watch football, I watch other sports too and I am very interested to do a lot of that while I’m in this job but actually there are so many challenges in this brief that it is so exciting to take on so we’ve talked about some of them, we’ve talked about the internet, we’ve talked about the way in which our society is changing dramatically and we’ve had a huge amount of technological change. We haven’t thought about the ways in which we protect people from the downsides, that’s something I have to think about.

SR: On a lighter note, who is your football team then?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well my grandfather was a huge Liverpool fan so he would always insist on going to Liverpool games.

SR: So you are a Liverpool supporter then?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Well I can’t be I think a Liverpool supporter anymore because I need to be impartial but I shall be watching the England games. I should say, I went to the England game which was the semi-final of the World Cup, I arrived just after the goal had been scored and it was all downhill from there so you might not want me to go and watch anymore England games.

SR: Can you tell me who Liverpool are playing this weekend then?

JEREMY WRIGHT: I can’t tell you who Liverpool are playing this weekend because I’ve been so busy preparing for this interview and it wasn’t one of the questions I thought would come up.

SR: A very good answer, fair enough. How about music as well, are you a music fan?

JEREMY WRIGHT: Yes, I am and all sorts so I’m lucky enough to have a breadth of musical tastes in the family so I have a 13 year old daughter who listens to a lot of Magic Dragons, so I listen to a lot of that, I like to listen to Coldplay but I also like to listen to classical music so for me this is a great job because it gives me the chance to do all of those things.